


Home

by CheerUpLovely



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, Episode: s03d21 Al Sah-Him, F/M, League of Assassins - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver comes home 2 years later.</p><p>He doesn't expect what is waiting for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You're My Home

Twenty months.

It had been twenty months and six days, and Oliver Queen slips back into his former life as if he’s never left it. Oliver Queen is no longer dead, no longer part of Ra’s sick control, and with the League of Assassins nothing more than a bad memory and a collection of scars adding to the marring burns across his body, he regains the life he left behind.

She never stopped searching for him.

The last time she saw him, he was kissing her goodbye. Telling her that it wasn’t a goodbye, but they both knew that it was. It spurred her on, forcing longer hours into her already long days, and while she knew she couldn’t have kept it up forever, she also knew that she couldn’t risk losing him. Ra’s may have had him, but she wasn’t lying when she said she would go to war to get Oliver back. So she ignored people forcing her to rest, retreating to chase impossible leads that she clutched to her determination. They watched her like clockwork, waiting for her to break and accept the possibility that Oliver wasn’t coming back to them, but it never happened.

Something was motivating her, something even stronger than her heart, which belonged purely to him, and it took several long weeks before they found out what that something was.

Then, when hope had sprung, they helped even more with her desperation to find him, but after months of searching and cold trails they had to step back when Felicity’s strength failed her. Ironically, she was the only one who continued searching. Even when they had run-ins with the League, they never saw or heard from Oliver.

She started to admit that it didn’t look like Oliver was coming back.

That was when the tears had started to come. She could blame it on a number of things, but she knew that it was the fear of a life without Oliver that was scaring her to tears. After three years, she was so used to him being a constant presence, a shelter, a strength, that every time her eyes fell on his disused outfit in the cabinet, she struggled a little more to get back on her feet.

Life went on without him. She had to be a part of that.

Diggle and Lyla lied about needing a babysitter so that Felicity could spend time with baby Sara, who later became her goddaughter - though whenever she thought about that role in the infants life she was always pained that her honorary godfather wasn’t there. They called her at four in the morning when she’d found her feet and had started to toddle around at last. They called her at midnight when she said her first word. They deliberately brought her to the foundry more and more after showing off her new favourite word ‘Licty”, as she soon became known. Licty became Licity, then Felicity, and she tried not to cry when she sounded it out as Oliver had once done. They showed her pictures of Oliver, marvelling at how she grew from calling him ‘Lolly’ to ‘Ollie’, to ‘Lol-ver’, and eventually, on what would have been Oliver’s thirty-first birthday - ‘Oliver’.

But then there he was. Like magic.

Even if he was twenty months late.

–

He’d returned a little over an hour ago, looking for her - always for her - but she’d been on her volunteer mission to collect Sara from pre-school while Lyla was out of town and Diggle was following up a lead. But the dark hair girl and another infant had been whisked out of sight by Thea before she could ask questions and that left Oliver relatively alone.

He knew she was coming. He knew that was why Thea left.

He hears her first, the soft clacking of heels in slow, hesitant steps, and he turns, launching himself at her. He’d planned something sweeter, planned to see if she was actually happy about his presence first, but this was the woman who had been his drive for survival for almost two years and he crushed her against him.

He’s waited to long to hold her again, and he doesn’t want to wait another second.

Being back in one another’s arms, after fearing that they’d never see each other again, brought a staggering warmth to the embrace. He isn’t sure how long he holds her for before he’s aware of her arms gripping him just as tightly, her hands tightening in his jacket to cement him to her, and when they do part it’s only enough so he can see her face. One arm releases her so come up and touch her face, assuring himself that this is real, that she is real.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers. The first words he’s spoken to her in two years, and it’s just as soft as when he insisted he loved her all the more for trying.

“You’re home,” she breathes in disbelief, taking in the extra scars present around his wrist and his face, one scar across his throat, dangerously close to his jugular that makes her shudder.

“I had to come home,” he says, bringing her back into his embrace with a deep breath that fills him with the scent of her shampoo. It’s exactly as he remembers. “I came as soon as I could.”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispers, and his heart jumps. “Oliver…that night…”

He doesn’t mean to jump on it right away, but he thinks he might be about to kiss her from sheer relief and then she’s asking about that night, the night that he’s remembered every single night since. It had been his safe thought in an undead place, remembering her confession, the whispered words, the sweet caresses, the knee-trembling passion. Their one night together before being torn apart.

“I came home for you,” he whispers, and he watches a weight lift off her shoulders at his words.

“You don’t regret it?” she checks.

He shakes his head. “Not at all. Do you?”

“It changed everything,” she explained, torn by the idea. “But like I said that night…I don’t regret a single moment.”

The hand on her cheek strokes it gently. “Loving you didn’t stop just because I wasn’t.”

“You still-?”

“How could I have stopped?” he asks her in a ragged tone.

“I never stopped either,” she says with a dip of her head, and he can’t hold it back anymore.

He tilts her chin up so he can kiss her. It’s soft, it’s sweet, and it’s everything he’s been dreaming of but when the familiarity of lips moving against each other starts to sink in, they pull each other closer. It’s been a long time since they knew how it felt to be so embraced in adoration. But before he can lose himself in it completely, Felicity pulls away from him and steps back just a fraction.

“Felicity?” he questions, when he notices the tremor in her hands.

“It’s nothing, I uh…I just, I have something I need to talk to you about,” she tells him uneasily.

“What is it?” he asks her, terrified that she’s going to reject him, that she’s moved on, that she’s made a home with someone else, that she is no longer his to dream of. She makes every attempt to explain, opening and closing her mouth several times before she sighs and tugs on his hand. “Felicity?”

“It’s easier to show you,” she tells him, and he follows her.

He follows her to the back room where Thea is there with the two children he saw before. Sara is growing into a beautiful little girl, so much more of a person than the baby he remembers, and she’s chatting away wildly to Thea who seats a boy in her a lap with light brown hair that dusts over his eyes.

“Who’s this?” he asks, his eyes flying up to Thea. The boy’s features scream Queen and his gaze softens at his little sister. “Thea…you-?”

“No,” Felicity tells him, stepping forward and taking the little boy into her arms. “Not Thea…me.”

The breath leaves his body. His heart jumps up into his throat. This is not Thea’s child, this is Felicity’s son. He’s wearing a long-sleeved navy shirt within a pair of jeans that look too small to even exist. He has Felicity’s tiny pink lips and his hair whisps in the same way hers does. But his eyes are a mirrored image he has seen before, and his nose turns up in a way that reminds him of his sister which can only mean one thing.

He guesses that’s he’s right in his assumption because suddenly Thea and Sara aren’t in the room anymore and it’s just him, Felicity, and her son.

“Is he…?”

“He’s yours,” Felicity nods, and the little boy reaches for her ponytail, curling his fingers into it like a comfort blanket. “Ours, actually. I know you had a pretty big job in making him but I definitely did a lot of the legwork.”

He’s only half listening, because he’s stepping closer, his hand raised but he’s so hesitant to touch because this cannot be real. He’s still dreaming. He’s still under League control. Ra’s is using this dream to trick him into submission. “I…oh god..I can’t…”

“It’s okay, you can freak out,” she tells him with an understanding softness. “I had six months to get used to the idea.”

“Six months?” he asks, concern crossing his features. “Was he early, was he-?”

“No, I didn’t find out until I was three months gone,” she explains. “We were a bit busy, searching…I ignored a lot of the signs.”

“So he’s healthy, everything was okay, he’s alright?” he asks, one hand on Felicity’s arm now but he’s so afraid to touch this boy.

“Completely healthy,” she assures him, her eyes on her boy as he watches this new man before him with cautious curiosity. “Eight pounds, six ounces, and yeah, thank you for passing on your huge shoulders, they were an absolute joy to push out after an eighteen hour labour,” she mutters in a way that is so Felicity it almost brings tears to his eyes, along with the fact that he missed the birth of his child. She must recognise it in his eyes because one of her hands comes to his cheek. “I wasn’t alone. Thea was with me for the whole thing. My Mom’s even moved to Starling now.”

Before she can say anything else, the boy in her arms starts to grumble. Looking up at his mother, obviously trying to tell her something, Felicity kisses his forehead. Oliver’s stomach clenched again, hit by how beautifully motherhood suited her. He wishes he could have been there to see her holding this newborn boy against her, hearing that brand-new-baby cry, watching her stomach expand as the baby grows within her.

“He needs changing,” she explains, moving to the side of the room where he finally notices the array of baby and child-friendly facilities. They must still spend a lot of time here.

She pulls out a changing mat and kneels on the floor, setting the baby on his back and Oliver doesn’t know what to do so he sinks cross-legged on the floor a short distance from them, staring at the boy he’s just learned is his son. While Felicity changes him, the boy watches him with a curiosity, and when he reaches out his hand Oliver is there in an instant, feeling him grasp three of his fingers with such certainty that there are tears in his eyes now.

“What’s his name?” he asks softly, never taking his eyes off the boy he’s missed out on so much of already.

“Tommy,” she whispers, smiling when the boy whips his head towards her for a moment at his name. “Thomas Oliver Queen.”

It’s a punch in the stomach. A good one.

“Tommy,” he repeats, lost for a moment on thoughts of where his name came from.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she murmurs awkwardly, trailing off until she saw his smile. “Thea suggested it. She thought you’d have always named your son after him.”

“I would have,” he nods, mesmerised by his child. “Tommy. It suits him.” The boy makes a soft cooing sound and he’s desperate for more. “Tell me about him?” he whispers.

“He was born on February nineteenth, so his birthday’s coming up soon. I went into labour on the eighteenth, but this boy’s about as stubborn as you are so he stayed put for a while,” she mused with a smile. “Everyone was there. My mom flew in, and I had her and Thea there in the room with me. Diggle thought it was symbolic that he was born the second the sun rose, something about a part of you bringing back some light to our lives, but everyone cried when he was born. I bawled for like an hour when I held him. But they had to help him out, so we did have to laugh for a while because his head was a bit cone-shaped for a while.”

“You have pictures?” Oliver asks, his voice pained.

“Thousands,” she assures him. “We took pictures of everything, for when you came home.”

When, not if.

“He loves strawberries,” she recalls. “He’s really fuss on bananas.”

“Bananas are gross,” Oliver defends lightly.

“He loves the ocean. Thea and I took him to the beach last month, and she was holding him so the waves were going over his feet, and I’ve never heard him squeal with laughter like that before. Uh…he has this habit of putting everything in his mouth as well, I’m really hoping he grows out of that.”

Oliver smiles, watching as Felicity trails her finger down Tommy’s cheek and smiles down at him. “You’ve never been this quiet when I’m changing you before,” she teases in a sing-song voice. “Are you showing off because Daddy’s here?”

“Daddy,” Oliver breathes out, and now it’s sinking in. He’s a father. This little boy watching him is his son. His little boy. A little wonder the perfect mix of his parents. His baby boy. Tommy Oliver Queen.

When Felicity’s finished changing him, she lifts him into his arms and he resumes the game he’s started with her ponytail. Oliver reaches out, running his hand over Tommy’s back in a way he barely notices. This boy is made to fit into her arms, and the sadness is overwhelming to know he missed out on the first year of his son’s life.

“Muh….mummmmmmmmy…”

Felicity smiles, kissing the top of his head. “Good boy, mommy.”

“He’s talking,” Oliver asks, snapping out of his small trance.

“Since three weeks ago,” Felicity nods. “Hasn’t stopped since.”

“Wonder who he learns that from,” he jokes, and then asks. “What was his first?”

“I was talking about you,” she tells him. “I always knew we’d find you, and I wanted him to know you, so we always look at your pictures and talk about you…and one day he just put his hand on the picture and said ‘dada’.”

The genuine pride on his face is enough to convince him that this is where he belongs. But he has missed this. His missed his son’s first words, and that’s barely scratching the surface. While he was rotting in Nanda Parbat, his son was opening his eyes for the first time. He hadn’t been there to hold him in the night when he cried, to change his diapers, to bathe him in the kitchen sink. He’d not been there when they panicked over a pregnancy test, or to watch Felicity grow with his child, to cater to strange cravings, to assure her that their child would be born into a home of love and affection.

He wants to ask what she held on to in that long labour. He wants to ask about sleeping patterns, living arrangements and so much more. He wants to know everything, to see every photograph. He wants to go home and settle into this life they have had waiting for him to come home to. But as the tears spill onto his cheek there’s only one question he can find the control to ask.

“Can I hold him?”


	2. Where The Heart Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: Yeah…. I’m really gonna need you to continue your “You’re My Home” Flic BECAUSE I NEED TO SEE MORE PLEASEEEEEEEEE
> 
> mimozka said: I know you must be super busy and swamped with prompts, but my kingdom for a part 2 of You’re My Home because it’s so damned fabulous?

Once Oliver has his son in his arms, he doesn’t let him go.

Tommy is a blessing he has missed out on too long, and of all the things he imagined waiting for him when he finally came home, he never imagined coming home to his child. It’s like all of his life has folded together without him, and to have this family so ready to accept him is…more than he deserves.

He has done terrible things with the League. He has committed acts more unspeakable than his previous sins, acts he knows he can never divulge, even to those he trusts most. He does not deserve to come home to a ready made family who have been waiting for him this entire time.

He’s pictured coming home in a variation of ways, all of them end up with Felicity in his arms and her body entwined with his. The League pushed women on them and he took them to his chambers, but nothing ever happened with them. They came to him eagerly, because they talked amongst themselves, and rumours were that Al Sah-him would give the women time to read, time to sleep, time to learn, all the while Ra’s thought he was bedding them. He would never take a woman who was not the one he loved, and he stayed true to her, even if he had asked her to go and live her life.

He had set her free. He had not stopped loving her.

She had not stopped loving him.

So he stands in her living room, the same tiny flat he remembers from before he left, and everything is just as colourful. Her possessions are mixed upon a mirage of children’s toys which are just as brightly toned as her decor, only there are more pictures of him around, so many pictures of her and their son and he looks at every single one.

Tommy is asleep on his shoulder, his coat on as well as his shoes, and Oliver carries the boy on his hip and lets him sleep. There’s something calming about his baby breath against his shoulder and he’s not ready to put him down yet. Felicity moves around the apartment trying to tidy it, eventually realising it’s futile and giving him this moment with his son, this moment to feel grounded, and starts to move around to gather pyjamas, clean diapers and everything else Tommy will need before bed.

Oliver’s gaze falls to a wall which is lined with framed photos. In a fashion that truly suits this home, none of the frames match. Part of him thinks he can pinpoint which ones came from Felicity, which ones from her mother, the fancier frames from Thea and the wooden homely ones from Diggle. He glances over these moments, these memories, and starts to realise this is what he has missed out on to save them from Ra’s hand.

He sees Felicity’s hand curled around her bump, large and heaving before her. It’s an intimate shot, something that looks professional, and god, she’s beautiful. It strikes him that’s the woman he loves carrying his son and it floors him like a lead weight in his stomach. The tears start to well in his eyes as he moves his eyes along the wall and he finds other moments. There is the mother of his child, cradling a screaming newborn, messy hair and glasses and tears on her face and his son is wide-mouthed and angry and beautiful. There is his son sat up in the bath with bubbles piled on his head. There is his son cradled in this arms of his mother, his aunt, his friends, his protectors, the people who love him most in the world. There is his son looking adoringly at Sara. There is Felicity and Tommy in countless ways with winter coats, with halloween costumes, with bathing suits, with messy breakfasts, sleeping in each other’s arms, and this is his family and it’s beautiful.

“Oliver,” she whispers, and the hand on his shoulder brings him back to himself.

He winds his free arm so that he can pull her against him, and he presses his lips firmly against the side of her head. He doesn’t care that his tears fall into her hair or that notices the hitches in his breathing, because he just needs them. “I’m so sorry,” he half-whines. “I’m so sorry I missed all of this.”

“You’re here now,” she assures him, one arm around his back and the other on Tommy’s back. “It’s not too late to be part of this.”

“I want to be,” he nods against her. “He’s my son, and you’re my…I love you so much,” he breathes.

“We love you too,” she whispers, her lips finding his cheek as his eyes close, but when she steps back and strokes her arm across him as she moves. “We have to get him ready for bed, he can’t sleep like this,” she nods to the sleeping infant, but Oliver’s arm instantly comes up to cradle him a little closer.

“I’m not…”

“You can hold him all night,” she smiles at him. “He’s a cuddler, so he’ll love it. We just need to get him into his pyjamas and then he can lie down with us tonight.”

Us.

He’s going to spend the night with the woman he loves and his son, and they’re all going to lie together.

So he follows her wherever she’ll lead him, because if this is how the evening ends, he’ll be a happy man.

–

He doesn’t sleep. By the time morning rolls around, Oliver hasn’t slept a wink. He doesn’t know when he last slept around the travelling, but they fell into bed around seven o’clock, and Tommy sprawls on his back in the space between them without a care in the world. He doesn’t understand the significance of the evening, all he understands is that he’s got one more person who adores him, and the little boy clings to them both.

Oliver can’t sleep when this is his new reality.

He spends the first half of the evening sharing gentle kisses with his beloved while she shares stories of their son’s life so far. She tells him about the pregnancy, about the birth, about how she barely slept for the first weeks and that’s when her mother moved to Starling. For all his opinions from Felicity’s former stories about how scatterbrained her mother is, it seems Donna has been one of her biggest supports and she dotes on her grandson.

When the stories fade into sleep, he watches the woman he loves as she sleep, reacquainting himself with the curves of her lips and each flutter of her eyelashes. He has dreamed of lying beside this face for so long it seems almost a trick of his imagination, but his imagination never truly captured the way her nose twitched when she started to dream.

Mostly, he watches his son. He learns every movement, every breath, and memorises his face, the tiny hands, he measures his tiny baby breaths and strokes his hand over the tiny mole on the back of his hand. It marvels him, as he takes in the brand new skin, a softness he’s never felt before, and how his tiny hand fits in his even as he sleeps - one hand tightly clinging to Oliver’s fingers, the other gripping Felicity’s nightshirt. This little miracle moves, breathes, lives, and yet was created from the darkness that lived within him. This was the last part of his light taken from him, and while Ra’s tried to extinguish what was left of his light, Oliver realised he never could - Felicity had taken that light with her when she left, nurtured it, grown it, and birthed it into this beautiful, beautiful boy that is his son.

He expects it to feel foreign, to feel odd and unnatural, but lying here with his family within arms reach is the most natural thing he has ever felt. His son shifts in his sleep and Oliver moves with him, raising his arm from the mattress when he stretches his leg into the space, and when Tommy turns his head to the side and heaves a particularly long exhale, the breath hits Oliver’s cheek and he feels the tears again.

Felicity wakes when Tommy is starting to fuss for food, which Oliver cannot give him, but she wakes with a smile at the sight of Tommy crawling over Oliver, exploring his father’s face with his curious hands.

“Da,” Tommy babbles over and over, first as an experiment, then as a declaration.

“Daddy,” Oliver whispers to him in wonder. “Daddy’s home.”

“Da…hoooooome,” Tommy repeats.

“Daddy’s home,” Oliver nods, his smile wide and uncontrollable as he places a kiss to his sons forehead and the boy giggles in delight.

Felicity just shuffles closer to them, lays her head on Oliver’s shoulder, and closes her eyes.


End file.
